Good Luck Mode
by The Soup
Summary: Three years after losing his powers, Kotetsu tries reliving his hero days through a robotic surrogate, The Cerebro, a suit created by the research of Barnaby's parents. But when the Cerebro malfunctions, everything in Kotetsu's world malfunctions with it.
1. Chapter 1

_**F**izzle, snap_ –

Electricity surges through a defenseless spinal column, racking it with searing pain. Crackles of violet light scramble his pained senses, sending a wave of emotional and physical distress.

And then Kotetsu T. Kaburagi knows.

Something has gone horribly wrong - inside him, and the suit.

The Cerebro suit—what he relies on to let him continue with his super hero lifestyle, is a robotic suit remotely controlled by hook ups to his mind and body in Mr. Saito's laboratory. Right now, it bucks and rages at mental commands for it to continue running away from the lasers and gunfire.

Synthetic nerve terminals mix up impulses. Sensors go haywire. Parts confuse themselves.

The clarity of the battle against the newest villain and minions melds to black, fading out of focus, as the Wild Tiger-painted limbs of the Cerebro sputter, lock up, and power down.

"Oh, crap," Kotetsu says, unable to move any further. Sparks pop off the electrical joints, and even though it wasn't his real body in the fray, Kotetsu feels every electrical shock frying his nerves.

The Cerebro suit: the top-notch of all robotic, medical, and genetic advancements, founded with the research of Barnaby's parents. It inputs the "pilot" in through a sort of simulated reality; the Cerebro acts as a surrogate body, the pilot acts as a surrogate mind, and together they combine to create the illusion of a functioning human being doing whatever other functional human beings do.

In Kotetsu's case, it's to help him remain a functional super hero after his powers left him completely three years ago.

And right now, the suit is failing to be functional in any manner.

In the middle of a massive gun fight, Kotetsu is in a statue-still mid-running pose, unable to run, unable to fight back.

As a lonely target among the other fleeing heroes, the bullets start ringing in. At first, bullets ping the Cerebro armored body and crumple like empty soda cans at impact. But as the gun fire is concentrated, the armor weakens, and Kotetsu feels each white-hot bullet as though they were piercing his own flesh.

"Tiger!" Barnaby Brooks Jr. is the only one of the fleeing heroes who notices Kotetsu is in lock-down. He rushes to him.

"I can't move…" Kotetsu breathes heavily from the pain. "Can ya… get me outta here?"

Before Bunny can reply with words, the gun men concentrate their fire on him. He instead replies with a massive tackle-and-carry maneuver, lifting the Cerebro suit to the safety of a building's smoldering skeleton left over from an earlier bombing.

The battlefield quiets. The gun men must be deciding their next move as Bunny and Tiger find their bearings in the transitory safety in the remains of collateral damage (not caused by Tiger for once).

"Bunny…" Kotetsu's body is still stuck in the mid-running pose, his back mostly flat on the iron-rich soil. His head and shoulders are free to move, and they're seizing as the electricity shorts.

"The suit…-ffffailing…-can't…"

More sparks sputter off him, and then smoke erupts from several cracks in the armor.

Bunny's expression is hidden by his helmet. His grip tightens around the Cerebro's hand. "I can't leave you here."

"You –ffff-…no choice…"

Kotetsu has more to say, more to feel, but the suit won't let him. The emergency retrieval system kicks in, ejecting him from the trance needed to operate such machinery.

He comes to in Saito's lab, gagging for air, as though held underwater for too long. Sweat pours off him, his heart rate exceeds the specified limit for Cerebro operation, and Kotetsu suddenly feels fear for the first time in a long time – a primal fear resonating in the amygdala, unable to cope with the physical shock of his body suddenly torn from reality as it knew it.

His eyes snap wide-open, blood shot, strained from the head set and mental demands. Kotetsu's consciousness recedes from the Cerebro, returning to his own physical, aging body, reminding him that he isn't a robot, that he is a retired NEXT who might as well be human.

Short of breath, he becomes all too aware of the tubes and cords wedged under his skin, feeding nano-machine supplements into his blood stream and reading nerve endings.

The tubes and cords, normally uncomfortable at first and then unnoticeable once the deep sensory transition into the artificial Cerebro conscious is made, aggravates his disoriented state by causing more pain, creating more danger.

Still suffering from a partial trance from the Cerebro, Kotetsu is not all together there in his head. He hastily rips and tears the cords, nodes, and tubes from the veins in his arms, legs, neck, and forehead. He's still gasping and gulping for air, either hallucinating that's he's suffocating from the malfunction of the suit or physically in all actuality. Panicking, as if driven mad, he shoves away the overhanging visor of the head set and bolts from the pilot terminal, but before he can take a fourth step, he falls to his knees.

Kotetsu's senses are overloaded – he struggles for control of his physiological responses, and although determined to return to normal, he is out of luck.

His breathing is stabilizing, but his stomach is protesting angrily with sharp nausea to the nano-machine pill he ingested prior to the deep sensory transition to help ease the process.

Barely holding himself up, Kotetsu is helpless when the vomit hurls up and spreads around his palms and fingers.

Weakness conquers will power, and the once great Wild Tiger passes out after collapsing in a pool of his own bloody vomit.

* * *

;I own nothing but the words and situations I control.  
First time writing for Tiger and Bunny.  
**TO BE CONTINUED**


	2. Chapter 2

"**Y**ou're never doing that again."

Barnaby's stern voice greets Kotetsu as he wakes up from the blackness of his consciousness, a confusing mixture of Cerebro residue and personal trauma that will haunt his memory.

Kotetsu smiles weakly, rising to his wobbly elbows on the crisp hospital bed sheets. He tries to ignore his foggy brain when he asks, "What are you talking about?"

His eye sight is fuzzy at the corners, his awareness and understanding murky at best.

"The suit is causing too much of a strain on you," says Barnaby. "The doctors are concerned that you may have internal damage, as well as other ailments related to the loss of your powers and age."

"They can't fix it? I mean, that's what we're paying 'em for," says Kotetsu. Right as he is fully sitting upright, a wave of nausea strikes him suddenly.

Barnaby instantly hands Kotetsu a sterile metal bin, just in time to catch the old man's gush of bile.

"They're running tests and blood work, but it's going to be about two weeks before they get the results," Barnaby says, unfazed by Kotetsu's vomiting, an elegant finger pushing up his glasses as he speaks. "In the meantime, you're not allowed to use the Cerebro, and the doctors have ordered me to keep you home so you can rest."

Kotetsu, still holding the bin in one hand, wipes his mouth with the other. "Are you kidding me? That's my life. I can't just give up on it. I'll be so bored."

"Don't be such a child. It's for the best." Barnaby hands Kotetsu a napkin for his hands and his mouth. "I'm taking full responsibility. I should never have let you use the suit… This is my fault."

"Hey hey hey, Bunny, you're not allowed to get all emo on me," says Kotetsu, reaching to hold Bunny's hand with his clean one.

Barnaby's head is down-turned, his eyes darkened with emotions difficult to put into words. "I've let you put yourself in danger."

"What? Are you kidding me?" Kotetsu doesn't hold back a hardy laugh. "I was putting my own life in danger for years before you showed up on the hero scene," he says. "So yeah, you're wrong to feel responsible."

Bunny opens his mouth for a protest, only to be cut off by the sound of his phone ringing. He shoots a guilty look at his partner.

"Go get it," Kotetsu says, smiling and trying to lay back on with his arms folded behind his head. "I'll be fine. I'm right here if you need me."

Comforted by Kotetsu's smile yet reluctant to leave his partner's side, Bunny answers his phone as he steps out into the hall.

Bunny's gone, and Kotetsu has a moment of reflection. His memory of the event is fractured, but he knows what happened despite the fragmentation – the most important bits are still present, however blurry.

_I broke down._

The thought is cold and sobering.

Kotetsu distracts himself by examining the bandages around his forearms. He notices some dried blood spots lurking underneath the gauze and he remembers the Cerebro hook-ups… and how they were forcibly, improperly removed.

Mental discomfort irritates Kotetsu as his brain feebly drags up a fragment matching the words "fear" and "dark."

A shiver travels all over his body when he pushes it away, trying to ignore it. An emotional echo reverberates from the depths of his being, but before he can recognize what's going on, it empties into the spaces between thought and dreaming.

In other words, he doesn't feel like himself – something is missing, or it just feels that way. He's spacey and incoherent. _Maybe they sedated me and the drugs haven't worn off yet…__  
_  
He isn't allowed to reflect any further, and it's probably a good thing. Barnaby has returned, and Kotetsu knows that look all too well.

_Worry._

Whoever it was on the other end of the phone didn't have any good news.

Kotetsu wasn't sure what to make of it. "Mr. Llyods wants to see me?"

"He wants to discuss our unique situation, but I told him that you've been hospitalized and we'll see him after you've recovered," says Barnaby in a tone edging on condescending, but Kotetsu knows him well enough to recognize he didn't mean it that way.

"That can't be good." Kotetsu's stomach gurgles painfully. He groans, clutching his gut. "Eeeehhhh, and that doesn't feel good, either..."

"Nurse! –" Barnaby rushes to door.

Kotetsu snatches at the fabric of Barnaby's elbow. "It's…fine." He closes his eyes, willing the pain away. His grip is slipping, shaking. "Stay."

Barnaby has nothing to say, overwhelmed by the many things going wrong in his and Kotetsu's world. His eyes fall to the computerized heart monitor, the IVs feeding much-needed fluids to Kotetsu's ailing form, and anguish fills him.

He returns to his partner's side, sitting on the edge of the bed. At a loss of what to do next, he merely puts his arms around Kotetsu to help him through the bodily aches.

Kotetsu wordlessly leans into the embrace, wondering if things will get better once he's back at the apartment.

The doctors assure the heroes that a great deal of Kotetsu's ailments are the manifestation of exhaustion, and send him home with orders to rest, drink plenty of fluids, and to take some pain medication while they wait for the results.

A limo drops them off at Barnaby's apartment – their apartment, actually. Moving in together has given them plenty of benefits that it keeps paying itself off over and over again.

Like in this particular case.

Barnaby knows without doubt that if they were living in separate abodes he would either have moved in with Kotetsu or forced the old man to live with him, just so he could care for him and take responsibility for… everything.

After a bit of a fuss once they got home, Kotetsu gives up trying to do anything else and stays on the sofa with a light blanket and a plump pillow. He's comfortable – a hell of a lot more comfortable than in the freaking hospital.

Despite all that has happened to land him here, he smiles. And then he realizes something.

"You never told me if you won or not," he says.

Barnaby's attention is in the fire place as he gets a cozy fire started.

"They got away, didn't they?"

The flames flicker gently. Kotetsu fortifies himself for the truth.

"While I was attempting to recover the suit's functionality, they snuck away. The other heroes were too far away in different hiding places to see which way they went," answers Barnaby finally.

Kotetsu sucks in a breath through clenched teeth – not because of pain: embarrassment. "I'm sorry, Bunny. If I wasn't such a -"

"It's… nothing. They're not a big threat." Bunny's lenses glimmer with firelight in an almost sinister way.

Kotetsu convinces himself that Bunny is anything but sinister right now, unsure of where the hell that thought even came from.

And then he finds himself a bit uneasy.

He wonders if perhaps Bunny is just being nice to him because he's ill, and that the gunmen who got away could be part of a much bigger problem. The hero in Kotetsu is dying to ask aloud if it's possible they're part of a revival sect of the former crime syndicate Ouroboros, but he holds it in, fearful because they're not ready to deal with the implications.

"Hmm…If you say so," says Kotetsu, breaking the silence that followed Bunny's assumption. "Then I guess, you're probably right."

Barnaby is satisfied with the fire at last. "Would you like me to make you some dinner?"  
"I don't think I can even keep anything down," says Kotetsu. "Why don't you come over here by me instead? I'll eat something later."

He throws his pillow on the floor and lifts his head up as an invitation for Bunny.

Barnaby takes the hint – his lap is Kotetsu's new pillow.

Kotetsu gazes up as his partner, smiles mischievously, and starts talking about his daughter as Barnaby's fingers play with his errant strands of hair.

"She'd freak out if she knew what I did," he says, remorse draping his words. "It was kinda stupid, the Cerebro thing… Guess it makes me a cheater for trying to give my powers a longer life than they were meant, huh." He yawns, eye lids drooping.

Barnaby continues softly stroking Kotetsu's hair, saying nothing.

"I've got –" Another yawn interrupts Kotetsu. "A lot of explaining to do to the other guys… But I only care if only one of them forgives me."

"Antonio?" Barnaby's stoicism breaks for a split second.

"Okay, two people."

This admission brings a pained smile to Bunny's lips.

Kotetsu is groggy, a combination of drugs, fading pain, and sleep deprivation. His focus is slipping. "You… forgive me… right? …Bunny…?" Sleep overtakes him, cutting off his train of thought.

Barnaby continues stroking Kotetsu's hair and face long after he's fallen asleep, lost in contemplation and in agony over what is to come.

* * *

;I own nothing but the words and situations I control.  
Got some plotting issues keeping me from posting chapter 3.  
Feel free to suggest plot developments in reviews.  
TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
